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Wednesday, 1 April 2015

Bugger it. If a third of the population are stubbornly sticking with the Conservatives in spite of all that they have done, surely it's time for the labour movement to have a rethink? Here's the deal. Regardless of the character your lefty politics assumes, you want a better society. You want to live in a world that's not dog-eat-dog, where the poor don't go hungry because the poor do not exist, and where life is about the stuff that really matters. Yet sometimes things have got to get worse before they get better. And here is where we arrive at the Conservative Party and why the left should campaign and vote for them. 1. The Conservatives are working. Say what you like about George Osborne, under his stewardship the economy has climbed out of a hole and is now putting on jobs at a startling rate. Granted, many of these aren't "good" jobs. As the Office of National Statistics have pointed out, some 28% of jobs created over the last five years are zero hour contracts. That of course doesn't take into consideration the many other types of jobs, such as temporary contracts/fixed term occupations, part-time work, and jobs that offer a low number of fixed term hours that can be flexed up through overtime - if it is available. It's a 'jobs miracle' only if you look at the headline figure and don't bother with the reality veiled by the stats. And yet in terms of absolute numbers, there are more workers than ever before. Objectively an all-time high number of people are subject to the wage relation. That means more trade unionists and with it the potential flowering of proper proletarian consciousness. The Tories have basically buried dynamite into the foundations of the British economy.2. We all know what the A-level sociology text books say. For Marx, the sounding of capitalism's death knell grows ever closer as greater and greater numbers of workers are immiserated. The less they have to live off, the more yawning the chasm between them and the lives of the capitalists, the greater the case for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie becomes. You just have to look at what's going to come if the Tories are returned to power. The continued growth of low paid insecure work. Crackdowns on trade unions and workplace rights, including doing away with protections afforded by EU membership. Another round of manic cuts to social security. More privatisation, including the systematic looting of the NHS. The list goes on and on. Everywhere they wield the whip hand anyone who gets by on a wage or a modest salary will feel the lash. The British proletariat, however, can only take so much. Jab a nest of vipers with a stick and eventually they will strike back, and so it is with the sleeping gigantic mass of 30 million proletarians. Every poke will remind workers of their 'us' vs their 'them'. Each legislative measure favouring business at the expense of the employee class is a nail in capital's coffin. It might not be this year, but when the spending cuts start to hit, Britain's workers will start to move.So whatever you do, don't vote Labour. Yes, they have policies that will provide the poorest and most vulnerable immediate relief. Yes, they have policies that will improve the lot of working people. But think of the prize. What is a few years of suffering set against the prospect of a socialist society? Let the ruling classes tremble before the spectre of communistic revolution. Vote Conservative.

Once spoke to a French far leftist who'd voted for Le Pen believing that the elimination of the reformist parti socialiste (which did fail to make second round)would destabilise the bourgeois French state...

In fairness, the Alexis Tsiprases and Yanis Varoufakises of this world probably at least sometimes wish Greeks had elected New Democracy. Then they'd have been able to kick off in peace without anny of this having to do things malarkey :)

Does anyone remember "libertarians"? I remember one of them in 2010, correctly percieving that neither Cameron nor any other imaginable democratic government was going to implement their agenda, announcing his intention to vote Labour.

The problem Phil is that having once been a Millie Tant myself, I can remember leading Comrades stating, "As Trotsky said, sometimes the working class needs the whip of counter-revolution to know what's good for them! Then they'll come to us!" Or words to that effect.

So your "Vote Conservative" did more or less fall into that narrative.